"But finally you find that you have people of flesh and blood on your hands, people with will and an individual sensibility of their own, made out of component parts you are unable to change, manipulate or distort." (Harold Pinter)

At first his vision was not clear, as if the world around him was out of focus. Minutes passed, then, step by step, he started making sense of what he was looking at. He was in some sort of cave, and far, far away in front of him, he could see light of day. He must have been lying down on a slab of rock, perhaps flat on his belly, but he could not feel the hard surface under him.

He tried to move, and sensed some motion, at the periphery of his vision. He wanted to touch, move his limbs, scratch his body. His body? He had wide angle vision, could look down at the floor of the cave down below, or up its ceiling, left and right.

Some oblong objects appeared, sideway of him. It took him some effort to recognise what they were: the pincers of some crustacean creature – was he in the claws of a giant spider?

He tried to move again, got some feeling in his right front limb, the claw had moved. Could he lift his head? Yes he could. It was so simple, the powerful limbs could lift his body up, shell and all.

The shell was his, he was the creature, the large sea spider, whose armour was scraping the floor of the tunnel, as he moved forward toward the light.